# Nir Eyal: Beyond Belief and how to change your mind to change your life

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/design-better-58582/nir-eyal-beyond-belief-and-how-to-change-your-mind-to-change-your-life.md
Podcast: [Design Better](https://stenobird.com/podcast/design-better-58582)
Published: 2026-05-14T15:25:00+00:00
Episode link: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nir-eyal-returns
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/p.podderapp.com/1794982497/chrt.fm/track/1C4248/prfx.byspotify.com/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/211/traffic.megaphone.fm/MLALE5944554372.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/design-better-58582/episodes/nir-eyal-beyond-belief-and-how-to-change-your-mind-to-change-your-life
Duration seconds: 4023

## Resource

Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nir-eyal-returns If you want to understand how much your beliefs shape your reality, try this quick exercise. Google the “checkerboard illusion” below and you can witness first-hand that even when you know two squares are the same shade of gray, your brain still refuses to show you the truth. If it can’t get a simple shade right, imagine what it’s doing with everything else. In his book Hooked, Nir Eyal helped people build habit-forming products for good. Then he wrote Indistractable to help people break free from the ones that weren’t. But after years of hearing from readers who knew exactly what to do and still couldn’t make themselves do it, he realized something was missing from the equation entirely. His new book, Beyond Belief, argues that motivation isn’t a straight line between behavior and benefit — it’s a triangle, and the third side is belief. The convictions we carry about ourselves, our abilities, and our circumstances quietly determine what we see, what we feel, and ultimately what we do. In this conversation, we dig into why your brain actively resists changing its mind, how the placebo effect is reshaping what we know about pain and performance, and what all of this means for designers and creative thinkers navigating the uncertainty of AI. Nir also gets personal about living with ADHD and dyslexia, stage fright, and how a single reframe — not a new fact, just a new belief — changed the way he experiences all of it. Bio Nir Eyal is a globally recognized authority on behavior change and human potential. His frameworks have empowered millions to build better habits, enhance focus, and unlock greater agency in their lives and work. A former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate Sc…

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